Project Event Bling

Event visualization bling tools at an affordable cost

Please view the web version at http://decks.vslashr.com/bling for a better user experience of this pitch.

Intro

Hello!

We're V/R, a data visualization / explorables studio based out of Singapore.

We've been around 6 years, and we've done dozens of visualization and storytelling projects for clients across government, corporate, start-up, SMB, non-profits.

Project Event Bling

I am going to start this ideas pitch by talking about a project we've done for an existing events client in the visualization space.

I will then explain how I think it can be broadened to a proper product, how I see things, how it dovetails with your brief, and why working with an events company makes sense.

Live event visualization

Live viz tool 1

We have built a bespoke solution for a client of ours in 2019, MCI consulting (an international events company).

This is a live event visualization based on real-time data input from an audience.

What you are seeing is on V/R's staging server, MCI consulting has it on their own official website, which we help administer.

Live viz tools 2

Data is all collected on live mobile survey inputs, designed specifically for the audience.

Live viz tools 3

This is a then visualized live (shown to audience) based on collected results.

You can see this here.

Live viz tools 4

Every survey has their own individual result (we collect emails). MCI sends them their own personalized results later.

You can see this here.

Live viz tools 5

Personalizing results are an excellent way to make the event sticky for attendees.
So far this bespoke solution has been used in events in 3 events around the world: Antwerp, Rio De Janerio and Singapore.
Audience use QR codes to access the various links for the live events.
There is a moderation page for the surveys (hidden to audience), so that the event organizers can tweak the data live as necessary.
All data submitted for each event are tracked and stored. From a data perspective, data is gold and can be used for all kinds of business models.

My comments

This is not a product. It is a repeatable service where the client calls us to update their surveys and tweak the visualization results.
Idea: Create a self-service product where event folks can create their own surveys (templated), and then use this to run their own visualizations at events.
There is no dashboard for analytics, and from a reporting perspective, a lot more things can be done.

Problem / Opportunity

Problem statement recap

You’re a frazzled marketer already busy with day-to-day work and your CEO wants something “cool” to impress investors, partners and clients at an event.
You don't have much resources (money or time), and yet you want a showcase that impresses.
You also want to keep audiences sticky, track data and do reporting.
What if you could find some self-service cloud-based tool that helps with this?

Market and opportunity recap

Many marketers have traditionally very campaign-centric budgets. If you have a way to track data and link it back to KPIs, the value of the events shoot up.
Help marketers by giving them something bling at an affordable cost that they can use to impress stakeholders, especially at events.

My honest thoughts

From a visualization perspective, there are tons of tools out there. Most of them aim to solve the business intelligence / analytics portion.
Your brief can be answered by hiring a business analyst, get them to download all the data from the various event tools used (Pigeonhole, etc.) and then chart this up using Tableau or PowerBI.
There is no denying that BI is a huge market segment, but it is crowded with start-ups and companies.
Beyond analytics / reporting, one missing ingredient...

My honest thoughts 2

... is the experience.
Visualization for bling and storytelling is a missing component that can be leveraged.
A lot of visualization tools are too generalized.
So marketers look for bespoke custom solutions, because they often start from the customer experience angle.
Reporting and analytics are of less concern until they are forced by their clients to account for them.

Another example

This is a 3D photo visualization project for Temask for their global event in Shenzhen, China, 2018.
Run at the large event hall, it was designed to run on self-service touchscreens and mobiles.
Something like this could be repurposed to be a long-term networking product for many events, instead of once-off code for a client.

Example continued

A possible product would be a networking tool: Help you find people you either knew the name (but don't know what they look like) or click on photos to find out about them.
Filters and sorts help make this easy, all tied together by cool curated 3D visualization bling.

Pitch

Pitch: Project Event Bling

What if you take all of these lessons learnt to build a cloud-based platform to do different live visualizations, targeting the needs of a marketeer?
Want to find out the answers to the questions in your brief? (Next event to be run, etc.)
Ask the audience in fun, experential ways and give them back something to make the event sticky.
Create custom forms to get visualization data, or if you use 3rd party tools, ingest it into the platform.

Ideas: Customer Experience

Have different visualization types (for different categories), and charge marketeers a price to access viz types on the cloud-based tool.
Visualizations are embeddable. You can run this as a standalone or embed onto your site (via iFrame). No code on your end.
Make the visualizations continually fresh and novel by implementing new themes and styles of animation.

Ideas: Reporting / Analytics

At the same time, of course collate the data and track analytics.
Use visualizations to do powerful, customized reports for individual attendees who submitted data.
Data, once collected and collated, can be useful drivers of other business opportunities.
It will be remiss of me not to mention AI, ML when you talk about data. Can be really useful even though I think this is sometimes way overhyped.

Competitive analysis

Many of the product companies for data visualization target exploratory analysis, and the market is super crowded here.
From Tableau, to PowerBI, to dozens of start-ups out there. But relatively few target visualizations / tools for presentation.
A few: Piktocharts, Infogram, CartoDB all target specific niches.
Likewise, this is a niche product targeted at a specific audience.
Strengths: Six years of building visualizations in a studio, so we have some understanding of markets / client mindsets.
Weaknesses: We're not from an events background. We're mainly tech specialists, with a bit of design thrown in.
A contextual understanding of the events market is important to attack the market.

About V/R

V/R(www.vslashr.com) is an interactive digital studio that has been around for 6 years.
We have a track record in the explorable and visualization space and have done dozens of projects. Clients include folks like Temasek, Fortinet, BASF, etc.
We are a technical crew. That is why clients buy us and stay with us in the first place. Here's our creds deck, gives an idea about out work.
Beyond this pitch, if you're interested in our work, do ping us!

About V/R 2

We already have an existing client-based business that will continue to run, irregardless of product ideas.
But having run this company for 6 years, it may be time to take some of the dozens of projects we've done for clients and explore turning them into products to pilot.
And for this events segment, we need the events context to make it really work.

So what do I want?

I am interested to find long-term partners to co-create product solutions.
Nobody has all the answers, and that's why you want to find folks who bring interesting ideas to the table.
So if you find these ideas interesting for the events space, let's have a BD chat.

So what do I want 2?

Validation / co-creation of product ideas with events folks.
Understand what resources are available to help scale my company if we choose to transit from more service to product company.
Mentorship, access to markets, tools, challenges to ideas. Funding is not likely to be a priority unless decide to scale.
There is no go-to-market strategies / budget projections in this pitch as yet as idea validation / fit is more important.
And anyway the OIP has already set some metrics for this challenge. So let's talk!

Questions?

chiloong@vslashr.com

+65 94355224